“We’ll have an even draw,” was all the old warrior said.
Diaz’s face was unreadable. “Nora can rest in the prow while Shade and Owen row behind us.” He said it levelly, staring past Bashan’s grin.
“I am not resting.” Nora butted in. “I can row just as hard as Owen can.”
“Probably better,” Owen added.
“Probably.” Nora narrowed her eyes at her twin, who shrugged as if to say it was worth a try. He wanted to curl up in the high prow and read by the light of the small lantern that hung there. She could see it in the way he stroked the parcel in his hands.
“Just do as you’re told for once.” Bashan cut her short. “It’s bad luck to have women on board anyway. Ancient nautical wisdom, that. So shut up, and sit down.”
She did no such thing, but shoved her chin forward a little more and offered Shade a hand up alongside Owen. Bad luck, pah.
After about an hour, though, it turned out she was good luck, as they were in need of an extra rower. Shade, the desert’s son, was seasick, retching noisily over the side, feeding the fish. So Nora sat on his vacated bench behind Diaz and clutched the oar, pulling in time with the half-wight’s strong strokes. Exhaustion hungered to take her in its grip—it had been a long day—but like when tending the charcoal, she was kept awake by the exertion burning in her muscles. And heave. Night held them tight, and with it came the cold that whispered of the nearing winter. The chill bit her cheeks. The warmth of the last golden autumn days was nearly spent, and Nora’s breath rose before her like a mist. And heave. She kept her eyes to the front, fixed on the sinewy muscles lining Diaz’s back, outlined by the glow of the lantern, watching them work with gritted teeth. Not that his back was hard to look upon, but in her mind’s eye she saw Suranna’s hands caressing Diaz’s neck, sliding down to his shoulders, leaving red grazes when she scratched her nails down his back in possession. Nora closed her eyes against a different kind of burning sensation. And heave.
The sea wasn’t very rough. There was but little sound, except the water’s gentle lapping against the hull, the roll and splash of the oars, and the occasional gargle or moan from the prow where Shade lay huddled in his misery. Salt lined the air and crusted the creaking wood, though the oars were polished smooth by years of handling. And heave. Nora kept hold of that thought: how long was an average oar used? Did it depend on the kind of wood? On its durability? How capable the wood was of handling the strain of the rowing work and the corrosion of the saltwater? What kind of wood would it be? Oak for hardiness? She imagined she felt the gnarly grain of oak under her hands like the veins of a live thing, and while she had to stare at Diaz’s back, it helped to think of oak…yeah, oak, and not sex. It must help, right? Gods, please let it help. Just a little. And heave—
Diaz jerked his head to the side.
“Did you hear that?” he asked no one in particular.
Bashan straightened at the tiller. “Hear what?”
The rhythmic beat of the oars broke. Diaz paused his rowing and stared out across the blackness. Garreth glanced around, looking for potential threats. But there was only the sea and its soft licks as their oars ceased.
“Other boats following us?” Bashan asked, rubbing his eyes with a fist.
“If other boats were following us, they’d have surrounded us already.”
That was true, Nora thought. The sea was empty. No fishing boat had launched after them; none sailed over the water under the light of a full moon. Odd.
“It sounded like…a song I remember. From long ago.” Diaz spoke haltingly, soft and low. “How far to Woodston?”
Bashan narrowed his eyes on their destination. Since they had started rowing, the lights of Woodston had grown closer, dwindling in the lateness of the hour, but they still seemed a long way off. It was more than two or three miles, that much was clear. Bashan shrugged.
“No fucking clue,” he said truthfully. “You think the water can carry sound this far?”
Diaz didn’t answer but cocked his head as though listening. So Owen turned on his bench, massaging his neck and shoulders, to give a rough estimate. Nora sat back, spine cricking, shifting her numb butt on the wood. If no one else was rowing, she’d be damned if she would.
“I think,” Owen said, squinting into the dark, “we might need another—”
He gasped and flinched, swaying the boat slightly.
“Holy Father of Light, did you see that?” He pointed into the dark off the side of the boat.
Nora leaned over. “What?”
“There was a face!” Owen’s eyes were wide. “A face in the water.”
The hair on Nora’s forearms rose to meet her brother’s fright.
“You’re just seeing things,” Bashan said sharply.
Diaz rose, careless of the boat’s rocking. He took the swell and compensated, walking over to Owen and Garreth to peer out to where Owen had pointed.
“For fuck’s sake, Telen! Watch it!” Bashan shouted as the boat dipped to the side. “We’re not exactly on land here.”
Nora glanced back at the prince, and for a moment she thought he looked scared. His face was paler than usual, his lips pressed thinner. It occurred to her that maybe for all his princely training, Bashan had never learned to swim. She certainly hadn’t seen him do it. He had already been in the boat. Dry.
She was about to look back to where the commotion was when something bit her on the wrist. She slapped at it in reflex, thinking it a mosquito. But this far out? And it stung more like a wasp. She looked down, expecting to see a small red welt in the moonlight. A slim strand, like a single spider’s thread, lay across her wrist, catching the silver light. As thin as a hair. She reached to pull it off, but it tightened when she picked at it and her fingertips prickled as though nettle-burned. She shook them in the chill breeze, yanking her right hand to tear the slender shackle against the wood, but it held.
The breeze died abruptly, and in the utter silence that rang loudly in their ears, a howling wail erupted, a melancholy, dissonant sound that crawled over the skin and then under it.
“Gjalp,” Diaz breathed.
Owen’s eyes grew even wider. “Gjalp? That means…mermaids, doesn’t it? Neeze’s daughters of the sea?”
Something tugged at the strand insistently, unbalancing Nora. The nonsense of mermaids distracted her. She fumbled for the thin loop, trying to unlatch it from her wrist, but couldn’t. The stinging sensation spread, reaching deep into the flesh of her forearm. She groaned. Another tug, this time a sharp one, had her off her feet, thumping her ribs painfully against the ship’s low hull.
“Neeze wept, Noraya! Stay still!” Bashan commanded as the boat rocked under the impact, making Shade whimper in his corner.
“Can’t,” Nora wheezed and tried standing, fear overridden by anger. “There’s something around—”
Another strong tug, and with a shout of alarm, she toppled over the side of the boat, plunging into the dark cold below.
* * *
“Nora!” Owen clambered over to the other side of the boat, but Diaz got there faster.
Bashan was shouting as the boat rocked precariously from all the motion. Even Garreth cried out. But Diaz had no time to give them heed. He pulled Owen back from the railing by the scruff of his shirt and gazed at the sea. The ripples and foam from Nora’s splash betrayed where she had gone under. Diaz took a deep breath and tried to imprint the spot onto his mind. He swiftly removed his boots and belt in an economy of movement, keeping only a knife in his hand. He had a gnawing suspicion he’d need it.
A hand broke the surface clutching an antler-hilted dagger, thrashing around, and for a split second Nora’s head appeared, only to gasp a breath before she was pulled back under. In the black brine, even with his pupils as wide as he could make them, Diaz saw little. He had to jump in. Foot on the low hull, he hesitated—she wouldn’t want him to help. She would be stubborn, and obstinate, and yell at him afterward that she’d had it all under control
. He waited another heartbeat, ready to jump, giving her a chance.
In an explosion of water, she came up and beat around, knifing the waves with desperate motions.
“Help!” she started to say but was dragged down, mouth filling with water before she had uttered the last letter.
Diaz threw himself into the surf.
Submerged, the shock of cold left him breathless, and for a few precious seconds he tried to orient himself in the enveloping darkness. The bubbles streaming past him led downward, and he sensed something swishing below. He pushed in that direction, salt stinging his adjusting eyes. Above the surface, clouds tore apart and a forlorn shaft of moonlight found its way into the deep, allowing him to see blurry images, indistinct, but picked out in silver. The hull of the boat behind him was surrounded by four shapes, lithe and twisting things with but few bones in their bodies, their sole-black eyes lit with a strange sea fire, translucent tendrils like coils of jellyfish peeking out from skirts made of tentacles. The nearest gjalp grinned and snaked a tentacle toward him, her mouth filled with teeth like nails. He recoiled, spinning backward in a clumsy dodge. The water made him slow. It was not his element, but theirs.
Searching for Nora, he clutched his dagger tightly. She hung in suspension below him, eyes closed, mouth slack, a thin tendril wrapped around her arm, pulsing with a green-bluish light, pulling her closer into another gjalp’s final embrace. He grimaced. His lungs were starting to ache for air, but he couldn’t leave her. He’d never find her again. He dove deeper and grasped her other hand, the one still clutching her knife.
This gjalp opened her razor-sharp mouth and wailed at him. The sound washed over him like a torrent of warm water, thrumming against his flesh, piercing him through with strange vibrations, touching his entire body, and slipping into his mind as well. It felt like…it felt like his dreams, a mix of lust and agony. He nearly dropped his dagger.
For a moment he stared, locked by the gjalp’s gaze, entranced by the look of furious longing, maybe hunger, on her face. Those black eyes, so like his own, wightish origin, for sure, but other, calling to him in a flicker of recognition. A flurry of her tentacles rose to meet him, pressing the mermaid’s yielding body around his hips in a supple but powerful grip. The weight pulled him down, Nora’s inert body dragging behind him. Eye to eye with the gjalp, Diaz couldn’t help but see her wide mouth, lips full and puckered. Instead of hair, she had what looked like moving, flat-ironed tentacles, like fins close to her skull, lining her neck down to her frail shoulders. It flustered him, bringing images of wight women to the fore. But wight women wrapped themselves in veils after their maiden years.
The gjalp’s webbed hand caressed his cheek, sending a long drawn-out sizzle down his spine. He gasped for air but breathed in water instead. His lungs burned as he kicked out, making for the surface, panic clawing at his thundering heart. He felt the gjalp withdraw, as though she knew what he needed and granted it to him, a lissome tendril licking at him in parting, scraping his shoulder and burning it with its toxin. He broke through the surface of the water seconds later, spluttering, retching, greedily drawing breath in large gulps, and hauling Nora up alongside him, clutching her lolling head to his shoulder. She drew no breath, still in his arms. Shuddering, he swam a few strokes toward the outline of the boat, pressing on with quick, efficient kicks.
Next to him the gjalp broke the water’s surface silently, matching his strokes with ease, only her large black eyes showing, the moon’s reflection in them a milky white spot. She half-rose, nipples showing dark on her near see-through skin, as she arched back, diving down only to rise next to him once more. A dance, then. He had seen dolphins jump with glee in the bow waves of a boat’s prow—maybe this was similar. As long as she didn’t bar his way. Nora still wasn’t breathing.
On the boat a commotion had broken out while he was under the water. The other gjalps were pulling themselves up the side, hoisting their glistening tentacles of endless want out of the water to ensnare the small group of men gathered around the central space where the mast would have been. Diaz saw metal glinting in their hands as he heard Bashan’s voice give low commands.
The gjalp next to him trilled a note that sank its teeth into Diaz’s mind. He felt the night come on hard, the strain in his muscles turn to a shiver, and for a moment, he thought of giving in to the sinking invitation of the depths in the gjalp’s agile limbs. No nightmares, no conflict, just endless silence. It was tempting. But he felt Nora’s heart slow in erratic beats, and his own heart raced at the thought of losing her to the darkness below. A vision of her locked in eternal suspension held him in an ice-cold squeeze. At the same time, it lent him strength, and he pushed through the temptation to just let go. His gjalp guard seemed to feel the change and splashed next to him indignantly.
“I can’t,” he told her. “I’m sorry.”
She tilted her head to the side as though she were pondering what he said, as though she understood. A knot in his belly twisted tighter as he wished Nora would accept those words as easily as the creature before him.
“Tell them to leave us alone.” He cocked his head at the boat, the sound of knives hacking into the wood disturbing the night. “Please.”
One of her tendrils slid past him toward Nora. Those all-black eyes framed a question.
“No, you can’t have her either.” He clutched Nora tighter to him, water dribbling from her lips onto his shoulder. She could still make it, he told himself. Though it seemed longer, only minutes had passed by. She could still make it.
Another splash.
The gjalp turned toward the boat and sang a deep note that reverberated in his tightening chest. The four others stopped their attempts to catch the men on the boat with their lures. They swam toward him, forming a loose circle about him, singing to each other in tones that cut his skin and made his stomach churn. But they let him pass. He swam alongside the boat and reached up to grab the hull. Nora hung like a dead weight. His hand slipped, and the two of them plunged back into the water. It was his luck, though, as a knife cut down in the exact spot where his fingers had just been. As Diaz came back up, he saw Garreth peering over the hull.
“It’s Diaz,” Garreth reported. A second after that, Bashan’s face appeared along with his outstretched arm, and relief flooded Diaz’s veins.
“For a moment there, I thought the gjalps would eat you,” Bashan said, grinning boyishly, grabbing Diaz’s arm.
“So did I,” Diaz said, hoisting Nora up into Shade’s and Owen’s helping hands.
“You could have left them the girl,” Bashan said as Diaz stumbled onto the deck. “Less trouble for all of us.”
Diaz gave him a look, too exhausted to do more than glare.
Fortunately, Owen hadn’t heard what Bashan had suggested. He laid out his sister on a bench and bent over her, checking her pulse, cupping her chin gently in his hands and shifting her head into a different position.
“Come on,” he whispered before pressing his mouth over hers.
A gush of water poured forth from her lips. Owen held Nora on her side as she retched and coughed seawater from her lungs into the bilge. Diaz watched as her brother whispered all sorts of soothing nothingness into her ear while she fought for breath.
“She needs warmth,” Owen said, undressing her. “Get a blanket or something.”
Shade got up and dragged out their traveling gear, hunting for covering.
“No.” Nora’s voice was hoarse. Her hand waved Owen weakly away while he peeled the wet black clothes off her.
“You’ll die of cold otherwise. And I won’t let you,” her brother said.
“Plus, we don’t mind seeing your tits,” Bashan said. “Small though they are.”
“Asshole,” Nora breathed through her chattering teeth. Owen gave Bashan a black look over his shoulder. “Better hope I die of cold.”
“A joke. To lighten the tense atmosphere.” Bashan shrugged, uncaring whether anyone believed him. “Seems she’s ri
ght as rain again. Good job, Telen. Savior of the day and all that.”
He slapped Diaz’s shoulder and strode over to the tiller once more, ordering Garreth and Shade to the oars.
Nora caught Diaz’s eye and winced. Anyone, but not him. He sighed inwardly. That was the way it was between them. He had hoped—but it didn’t matter. She was safe now. The gjalp’s tentacle had left a curling red pattern on her arm, but she was safe. Diaz looked away while Owen covered Nora’s nakedness, as she suffered another bout of hacking cough. Her breath rattled and she shivered in the huge fur Shade had found for her.
For a while Diaz was content to simply sit and rest, the water dripping from him forming a large puddle at his feet. The wind had started up again, and he wished they had a mast, and a sail. Hours until dawn left, and they still had a lot of rowing to do. He ran a hand through his wet hair, squeezing the water from it. As the boat moved slowly toward its destination, the gjalps swam beside it, breaking through the waves again and again in their dance. He raised a hand, a greeting, a thanks, maybe. The foremost gjalp nodded, and as though she had been waiting for a sign, she and her friends vanished into the black.
“I wonder why they let us go.” Owen moved next to him, considering the black depths rippled with silver.
Diaz lifted a shoulder. “Reasons, I’m sure.”
Owen grunted and turned back to his sister as Diaz pulled his wet shirt over his head. He hadn’t changed after his swim from the docks, but now it seemed like foolishness rather than hardiness to sit in dripping clothes all night. He felt eyes on him and looked to the water once more to see whether his gjalp had returned. Nora coughed raggedly, drawing his attention. Her gaze on him made his heart jump. For the first time in a long time, it wasn’t red hot with fury. His breath faltered. He waited for the shadow hands to come slipping over his body, manipulating, lighting his skin aflame.
On the Wheel Page 4